Purpose The adolescent developmental task of establishing autonomy from parents is supported through various aspects of executive functioning, including critical thinking. Our aim was to investigate younger and older adolescent language performance in form, content, and use in response to a moral dilemma task. Method Forty-four typically developing adolescents completed a language sampling task, responding to stories that contained a moral dilemma for one of the characters. Two age groups participated: younger adolescents (n = 24, 12;2-13;11 [years;months]) and older adolescents (n = 20, 16;1-17;11). Participants produced a monologue in response to an open-ended question prompt. Responses were transcribed and analyzed for discourse production on measures of form (verbal productivity and syntactic complexity) and content (semantic diversity and word percentages in three semantic domains: affective, social, and cognitive). Language use was evaluated using a coding system based on Bloom's revised taxonomy of thinking. Results There were no significant group differences in performance on measures of syntactic complexity and semantic diversity. Significant differences were found in adolescents' language using Bloom's revised taxonomy. The younger adolescents demonstrated a significantly higher proportion of utterances at Level 1 (remembering and understanding) compared to older adolescents, while the older age group produced a higher proportion at Level 3 (evaluating and creating). Conclusions The moral dilemma task was effective in demonstrating the growth of adolescent language skills in use of language for critical thinking. The results highlight the clinical utility of the moral dilemma task in engaging adolescents in discourse involving critical thinking, whereas the associated coding scheme, based on Bloom's revised taxonomy of thinking, may differentiate levels of critical thinking and provide direction for intervention.

中文翻译：

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在批判性思维中调查青少年话语：对包含道德困境的故事的单调反应。

目的 通过执行功能的各个方面（包括批判性思维）支持青少年建立自主权的发展任务。我们的目标是调查年轻和年长的青少年在应对道德困境任务时在形式、内容和使用方面的语言表现。方法 44 名典型发育中的青少年完成了一项语言抽样任务，对包含其中一个角色道德困境的故事做出回应。两个年龄组参与：年轻的青少年（n = 24, 12;2-13;11 [年;月]）和年龄较大的青少年（n = 20, 16;1-17;11）。参与者针对开放式问题提示进行了独白。针对形式（言语生产力和句法复杂性）和内容（语义多样性和三个语义领域中的词百分比：情感、社会和认知）的测量，对响应进行转录和分析，以进行话语生产。使用基于 Bloom 修订后的思维分类法的编码系统评估语言使用。结果 在句法复杂性和语义多样性的测量上，没有显着的组间差异。使用布鲁姆修订后的分类法发现青少年的语言存在显着差异。与年龄较大的青少年相比，较年轻的青少年在第 1 级（记忆和理解）的表达比例显着更高，而年龄较大的青少年在第 3 级（评估和创造）的表达比例更高。结论 道德困境任务有效地证明了青少年在使用语言进行批判性思维方面的语言技能的增长。结果突出了道德困境任务在使青少年参与涉及批判性思维的话语中的临床效用，而相关的编码方案基于 Bloom 修订后的思维分类法，可以区分批判性思维的水平并为干预提供方向。